Body image and fat prejudice is a topic I've been trying to talk about almost ever since I started this journal, and I keep reading things that bring me back to it, and every time I start a post I give up because I'm pretty sure I'm going to offend people. Quite often I upset myself too. I've finally come to the conclusion that the best way to start discussing the question is to be very personal. I'm going to talk about my own experience of being fat, and not draw any implications yet.

I've been fat ever since I hit puberty. To be precise, I've been on the borderline between the "overweight" and "obese" BMI categories pretty much that whole time. On the whole, that hasn't really affected my life very negatively, but it has coloured my experience of the world.

( body image discussion may be upsetting or triggering )

What upsets me is not that the hand I was dealt was one that included being so-called obese. It's the constant irritation of encountering hateful comments about fat people, even from sources that are otherwise quite sensitive and respectful. Sometimes people reassure me that they don't mean me, they mean really fat people. I'm not "fat", because I'm not ugly, or lazy, or stupid, or irresponsible. Well, guess what, most other fat people aren't those things either, or at least they're no more likely to be so than thin people. It's clearly true that many people are much fatter than me, and have often had a much, much more difficult time as a result than I have; I'm not trying to be a drama queen or look for sympathy here. But the thing is, any time somebody is making the assumption that there's some kind of size boundary above which you're a disgusting pig with no self-respect or willpower, the fact that I fall below that boundary in their eyes isn't much of a comfort to me. The boundary of what is defined as "fat" is very much dependent on context, and as I said at the beginning, the official medical definition makes me obese.

Another pattern that sometimes happens is that people justify their prejudiced comments because being fat is "unhealthy". But even if being fat is bad for you, which is debateable, there's no excuse to make prejudiced assumptions about people or even call for restrictions on their rights because they happen to have some unhealthy behaviours.

I'm going to leave this contentious topic at that for the time being. I just want to make it absolutely clear that comments about how disgusting fat people are, or about how fat people shouldn't get healthcare, or hurtful "jokes" about fatness, or anything along those lines, are comments about me. I hear them as comments about me, and in extreme cases, as threats to me. And I'm not prepared to hate my body in order to avoid being emotionally affected by those comments.

Some very right wing American political thinker died recently; frankly I hadn't heard of him until his death, but he sounds like he was an absolute piece of work. Of course, this has reignited the usual debate about whether it's acceptable to say that someone who recently died was a disgusting racist. I started a comment to that Making Light thread, but in the end decided that it was too long and rambly and not really on topic (given that I barely know who Buckley was anyway), so it is better as a separate post than a comment on someone else's blog.

( speaking ill of the dead )

Pain is bad. Mortality is bad. The fact that sometimes they affect despicable people doesn't really improve things very much, in my opinion. And part of the definition of not being evil is that you don't take pleasure in someone else's misery; using the excuse of their past bad behaviour to indulge in fantasizing about such things is morally dangerous.

There was a meme a while ago where people had to take a list and bold the "privileges" they experienced growing up. I know I've left it too late to address this, but I think it leads to some interesting ideas in general, so I'm going to babble a bit.

To deal with the meme itself: it originated from a teaching exercise developed at Indiana State University. Most people who filled in the meme commented that it isn't terribly well thought out. Some of the criticisms are a bit off-target; yes, it is US-centric and yes, it concentrates on class to the exclusion of other kinds of privilege, but that's because it was designed to teach American college students about class, not to be used as a meme in the rather international and highly varied context of LJ, or to make a profound statement about privilege in general. Several people argued that it fails even to address even American class privilege in a sensible way; I don't know enough about that to be able to comment. My reading of it is that somebody who bolded most of it would have the following advantages: a financially stable background; guardians who were committed to education; to some extent, though the list doesn't cover this as well as it might, a culture which is socially valued. Those are definitely advantages which some people have and others lack, which is not to say that everyone who has them must have a wonderful and perfect life and everyone else must be living in misery!

But I think the reaction to this meme is a good example of why those privilege lists don't really make the point they are trying to make very well. ( further discussion )

Well, what do you think? Someone complimented me recently on posting thoughtful essays to LJ, which made me realize I haven't done so in quite a long while. And now I've got past the major worst of work panic, I can write up things that I've been ruminating on for a while.

Consider the following pair of statements:

A] God created the world.
B] A combination of random mutation and natural selection gives rise to new species.

There seems to be a persistent assumption that A implies not B. Even worse, there is a minor industry based on the false corollary that B implies not A, which really has no logical basis at all. This annoys me, because a lot of energy is being expended on debates which are logically stupid, but which also have harmful effects.

( further expansion )

Anyway, the main conclusion is that statements A and B are independent because they are different kinds of statements. If people want to argue for or against one, they shouldn't muddy the waters by trying to talk about the other. The secondary conclusion is that there are some extremely unpleasant people who have a vested interest in convincing people of not B, and that decent people should be very careful in how they argue against such unpleasant elements, to avoid accidentally playing to their hidden aims.

I have other things to say about this topic but this is insanely long anyway. It's prompted by various conversations on the topic, both around LJ and in person. So thanks to smhwpf, pw201, pseudomonas, rysmiel and anybody else I might have forgotten who's been going over this stuff with me. See also, if you're not exhausted by now!

And, er, sorry about the music choice...

I'm in that annoying stage where I don't quite have time to write about the things I want to write about. This is partly because I've been spending my free time following links around and reading other people's writing, instead of posting.

So I might as well share some of the gems. The internet is full of instant gratification, but this year I'm starting to find myself drawn to full-length, properly though out essays much more than in the past, and the fact they're online rather than in foreign newspapers I wouldn't otherwise read is just a matter of convenience.

( links with some commentary )

Hm, so much for not having time to post so I'll just put up a few links! That turned into a long essay after all. Let's see if I can harness that verbal energy into writing the review I'm working on.

I'm probably going to offend everyone with this post, but hey. Several things have come up recently that have put the idea into my head to post about the dreaded topic of abortion.

The main trigger was lavendersparkle's excellent polemic. I really like her argument, and it's one I don't really see being made in all the mountains of pointless aggro that makes up most of the abortion debate. She argues that The majority of abortions in the US and UK are caused by patriarchy, and gives a very closely reasoned and compelling explanation for this position, because: Abortion doesn't solve [...] problems; it simply makes them less visible. It pushes the burden of 'dealing' with them onto women who are then expected to be thankful that had the 'choice' to have an abortion. And her conclusion is the triumphant: I get so annoyed when I see pro choice feminist schmucks kidding themselves that they've achieved some kind of feminist utopia by being allowed to use their money, their bodies and their offspring to cover up the huge injustices of our society.

Then I found myself discussing abortion with ploni_bat_ploni, and ended up being quite vehement about certain aspects of the issue. I think I'd probably like to set my thoughts down here.

The last thing which really convinced me I should overcome my trepidation and post about this is the aftermath to this incident at Den of the Biting Beaver. (In case you haven't seen this, I'll summarize the background: Biting Beaver is a fairly strident American feminist blogger. She experienced a contraceptive failure and posted about having to go through hell to get the morning after pill. Her post was very widely linked, primarily by lefties outraged at the way the ill named "moral right" have all but closed off access to emergency contraception in the US. But this prominence brought the post to the attention of the pro-life crowd, some of whom proceeded to troll her (see the first link). Eventually, Biting Beaver was able to obtain her morning after pill. However it didn't work, and Biting Beaver was brave enough to post publically that she is pregnant and intends to have an abortion.)

This conjunction of people talking about abortion served to remind me why I potentially alienate everybody by being neither pro choice nor pro life. Essentially, I think the pro choice movement is generally well-meaning, but in their fervour to keep abortion legal, lose sight of the fact that abortion is not a good thing. However, I think much of the pro life movement is actively evil, even though I am broadly in agreement with the basic tenet that abortion is wrong.

( elaborating this position )

I happen to believe that the issue, like many moral questions, is extremely complicated and good people can come to different conclusions from me, and still be good people. But if you want to take exception to this, go ahead.

More and more, I am noticing a really pernicious meme: the subsitution of health for religious virtue, or even salvation. And the notion of virtue that is being replaced with health was a bad and dangerous frame for morality anyway. An LJ post like this is only the tiniest of drops towards countering this bad meme, but I would rather make the post than do nothing. And of course I welcome any criticism or development of my argument.

( as the great philosopher said, sh*t happens )

A couple of additional notes, to pre-empt the most likely criticisms I expect for this essay. Firstly, I'm not in the least saying that Christianity is terrible or any worse than any other religion. I think some of this view of virtue may be partly influenced by Protestantism, but that's a guess I can't prove. It happens that Christianity has been a dominant influence in our society for a long time, and there's nothing more to any bias in my depiction than that.

On other occasions when I've made arguments similar to this, I have found myself getting distracted into stupid debates about whether people should take responsibility for their actions. I absolutely believe that people should take responsibility and should know and accept that their choices have consequences. That's a given, as far as I'm concerned. But taking responsibility is a completely different thing from believing in magical rituals, or trying to claim that virtue is always rewarded.

It seems that lots of people round these parts are "blogging against racism". I'm really not sure whether I should participate, and here's why.

I should post something because I am against racism. Well, obviously; even BNP spokesmen sometimes claim to be against racism these days. I don't see much merit in giving myself a pat on the back: look at me, I'm such a good person, I posted to LJ saying Racisim is BAD!.

I should post something because I've been reading quite a lot of interesting and thought-provoking stuff because of the meme and other discussions about racism going on in the blogosphere more generally. But one thing I'm picking up very strongly is that a lot of people seem to want white people to "shut up and listen" and not try to take over the discussion. Well, I'm quite happy to shut up and listen, especially in the blog context because lurking when there are interesting discussions to read is a lot more rewarding than being in a conversation where I'm not allowed to speak.

The trouble is that if I don't post that I am against racism, I could be seen as tacitly supporting it, or not making sufficient effort to combat racism. I've seen just as many complaints about white people being unfairly privileged because they don't have to think about racism if they don't want to, or perpetuating racism by not speaking against it, as I have about white people invading the discussion and making it hard for the victims of racism to be heard.

The side-issue to this is whether I am one of the "white people" intended by the rhetoric from either side. I feel odd defining myself as "white", but clearly I have no skin pigmentation at all so I can hardly be anything else. I want to say "non-black", by analogy to the expression "non-white", but that would probably end up offending people. Navel-gazing about what my racial identity is is definitely not the point though. I think part of the problem is that the "racism" in "Blog against racism week" is sometimes being used specifically to mean racism against African-Americans, namely people with dark skin who live in the USA. Obviously, I have absolutely nothing to contribute to any discussion about the experiences of African-Americans. But I'm also not "white" in this context because I'm not a light skinned, WASPy American either! So on that level the whole discussion has nothing to do with me, except that, well, racism is happening and I would like to stop it, which is too obvious to be worth stating.

Oh, and I don't understand Theory. I don't understand gender theory or queer theory despite being gay and female, so I have even less clue about race theory. I can't use the jargon convincingly, I don't understand the ways of arguing that seem to come from Theory-based assumptions. Because the area is emotionally charged, this blind spot means that almost anything I say is likely to offend people. (By the way, if you are already offended by this non-post, please do tell me so.) It's probably better to say nothing at all than to speak against racism in the wrong way and come across as racist. Of course, perhaps the reason I don't understand theory is that I am in fact racist, however much I try not to be. I really hope that any friend who hears me saying something racist or with the potential for racist effects will point out my error to me.

So. I am very much against racism, but I don't think blogging the fact that I am against racism is going to do the cause any good.

A random passer-by contacted me off LJ to ask: Is it difficult to reconcile science and religion? The flippant answer is: in my world, they never really quarrelled. But I thought I might expand a bit on that, especially as a few people expressed interest in seeing my thoughts on the topic when I alluded to it.

( personal musings, not a definitive statement )

So the only conflict I am left with is deciding whether I should use my science icon or my religion icon for this post...

In case anyone is living under a rock, they've just released a Narnia film. This has led to lots of fun discussion about Narnia. daegaer has collected a lot of links, from both traditional and alternative media. On the whole the bloggers do a better job than the journalists, IMO. She has some good discussion in her own journal too.

If you don't want to plough through all those essays, the key one to read is Andrew Rilstone's Lipstick on my scholar. ( my take on the Problem of Susan )

With that preamble, what I really wanted to talk about is sartorias' recent post: Lewis vs. Susan. sartorias is reading the pshat of the Narnia Chronicles, rather than the nimshal of the Christian allegory. (If English has any technical terms for analysing allegorical text, I don't know them, so I borrow the terms from Jewish Biblical scholarship.) Why, within the story's own terms as opposed to the wider Christian context, is Susan excluded? The discussion on that post is really fascinating, and covers the religious questions, the feminist issues and all kinds of different viewpoints. There's one thing that stood out for me even with all these lovely thoughtful ideas, though: this comment of papersky's.

Let me highlight this sentence from papersky's comment, because I think it really brilliantly captures the experience of feeling yourself to be the only authentic human drowning in a sea of sheeple:

When I was a teenager there was a point where it really did seem to me that my female friends were actually ceasing to be people in their pursuit of being teenagers -- it wasn't sex so much as a desire to be attractive (fashion and make-up and dieting) a desire to have a boyfriend as an accessory and a desire to be "in" (changing, or affecting to change their personal tastes in music, films and culture generally to the majority taste)

The thing is, I think that's a hugely common experience among teenagers: believing you're the only one in your entire peer group who isn't totally superficial. Browsing around on LJ is a good way to get a perspective on this; you can see journal after journal after journal where teenagers, mostly girls, talk about how most of the people they know are idiots who only care about fashion and being popular, and they're the only one with ideals. I have this vision that the girls a particular unique snowflake despises are simultaneously writing in their journals about how they're so lonely being the only person who cares about anything beyond fashion and meaningless "relationships"...

I'm not going to embarrass myself by reproducing here the bad blank verse I used to write (and publish in the school magazine) when I was a teenager. I was luckier than most, because I managed to connect with other real people even before I had the maturity to realize that most people are worth getting to know, and you just have to make the effort. This led to some really intense and precious friendships; feeling that my friends and I were the last bastion of resaon against moronic popular culture was a very bonding thing. I had blue_mai, and Spanish M, and doseybat; I wasn't entirely alone.

CS Lewis was of course writing for children. If he actually intended to portray being Christian in a secular world as like being the only teenager ever to care about higher things, he was being very clever in some ways. The trouble is of course that Susan is discarded so suddenly; Lewis' readers are just as likely to identify with Susan (who is of course a very sensible and likeable person for the whole series up to the very last bit at the end) as anyone else. And the other trouble is that any really mature reader, as opposed to a child who thinks they are mature, is going to be able to see the worth even of someone who cares about mainstream culture, and therefore be annoyed that Lewis' Aslan doesn't value such a person.

While I'm (vaguely) on the subject, cakmpls has a very cool piece on The Outsider in A Christmas Carol. Scrooge, unlike the kids in Narnia, is saved precisely because he learns that he isn't actually superior to everyone else. He doesn't have to be an Outsider. Lewis' characters effectively get divine sanction for their smugness, and maybe that's the problem.

I'm a little bit behind the times on this, but there has been a fair amount of discussion around LJ about this survey on attitudes to rape organized by Amnesty. This parody of dumb rape prevention advice has been doing the rounds a bit (I think I have the original version, thanks to redbird, but it's a bit hard to trace memes to their source), and itself has provoked a range of reactions.

( you've probably guessed by now that this post discusses rape )

I've been bouncing various ideas around about this topic for a while now. The main immediate trigger is the discussion that developed around my post discussing the election result, but it's a general response to a whole bunch of things about the current political situation, discussions I've had or eavesdropped on via LJ...

( off-the-cuff, rambly and probably not very structured )
I don't think there's a conclusion to this. The statement that Anti-semitism is a very light sleeper has become such a cliché that I'm having a hard time finding who originally said it or the exact wording of the quote. But whoever it was summed things up better than I can.

Additional note: part of what I wanted to discuss in this post was a comment, I think by papersky, about how shocking it is to read novels from before WW2 in which sympathetic characters make antisemitic comments. Of course, now I can't find that comment at all; if anyone happens to know where it is I would be most grateful. I think it's either in papersky, rysmiel or lethargic_man's journal, sometime in late March or early April, and either of the latter two might remember the discussion I'm talking about.

Someone posted in a friends locked entry a description of the sort of home she'd like to live in. I think this would make a good meme, so...

Unlike the person who inspired me to post this, I'm ruling out actual magic (or equivalent technology). So, there is going to be some financial cost associated with the place, the amount of space available is going to obey the normal laws of physics, there is no teleporter conveniently stashed in the garage, it doesn't clean itself effortlessly.

( castles in the air )

OK, so it's basically a student house with frills. What can I say? I never asked to grow up!

Today is the 24^th day, making 3 weeks and 3 days of the Omer.

It occurs to me that this is the first Valentine's Day I've been single since 1998. ( self-indulgent wibblings )

Lots of happy memories, lots of people I love every day of the year and without any regard to whether I happen to be dating them. This year I'm single and decidedly happy about it. I would like to request that my relationship karma be transferred to someone who needs it more than I do, because I know there are a lot of people I care about who would rather not be single today or in general.

Happy Valentine's Day to the people who gave me the privilege of sharing their lives for a while, who provided a framework in which it was socially permissible to express how much I love them. Happy Valentine's Day to my friends who inspire me and bring more love into the world by their devotion in their relationships. Happy Valentine's Day to my friends who were there for me when I was finding relationships and relationship transitions hard going. Happy Valentine's Day to my friends whom I love very dearly whether or not they are my partners (former or actual or potential). Please don't imagine I love you any less just because our culture has fewer superlative words and less admiration for some kinds of love than others.

Those categories overlap a whole lot. I'm not going to make a list of names because I hope my loves know who they are, and this isn't a primary school exercise in delineating who's in my gang. And I have good wishes to spare for anyone who happens to read this, I'm in that kind of mood.

Tongue-in-cheek VD e-card for anyone who would appreciate such a thing.